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ADDRESS AND POEM 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. 



AT THE CELEBRATION OF ITS 



EIGHTEENTH ANNIVERSARY, 



SEPTEMBER 13, 1838 




vuy 



AN 



A D D R E S 



DELIVERED BtFOUE '1HE 



MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 



AT THE ODEON IN BOSTON, 



SEPTEMBER 13, 183 S, 



BY EDWARD EVERETT. 

Honorary Member of the Association. 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM D. TICKNOK, 

Corner of Washington and School Streets. 

1838. 



§ 



HZ sot 
.£78 



Makdea & Kimball, Pkinteks, 

No. 3 School Street. 



6 51.6-3 

FEB 1 7 1947 



Boston, September 17, 1838. 

At a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association held at their rooms 
on the evening of September 14, it was unanimously 

Resolved, That the Committee of Arrangements be directed to express 
to His Excellency Governor Everett their sincere thanks for his eloquent 
and impressive Address, at the celebration of their Eighteenth Anniversary, 
and to request of him the favor of a copy for publication. 

In accordance with the above vote, and the universally expressed wish of 
the public, we would respectfully request of your Excellency a copy for 
publication. 

We have the honor to be, 

Your obedient servants, 

Isaiah M. Atkins, Jr. 
Nath'l P. Kemp, 
Nath'l Greene, Jr. 

To His Excellency, Edward Everett. 



Watertown, September 17, 1838. 

Gentlemen : 

I have your favor of this day, communicating to me the Resolutions 
passed by the Mercantile Library Association on the 14th. Be pleased 
to express my thanks to the members of the Association for the kind no- 
tice taken of my Address ; and inform them that I shall be happy to fur- 
nish a copy of it for the press. 
I am, gentlemen, 

Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Edward Everett. 

Messrs. I. M. Atkins, Jr. 
Nath'l P. Kemp, 
Nath'l Greene, Jr. 



ADDRESS. 



In compliance with jour request, gentlemen, I ap- 
pear before you this evening, to take a part in the ob- 
servance of the eighteenth anniversary of the Mercan- 
tile Library Association. This meritorious institution 
was founded for the purpose of promoting mental im- 
provement among the young men of the city engaged in 
commercial pursuits. Its objects were to form a library 
well furnished with books best adapted to their use ; 
to lay the foundation of scientific collections ; to make 
occasional or stated provision for courses of instructive 
lectures ; and to furnish opportunity for exercises in 
literary composition and debate. It would be super- 
fluous to offer any labored commendation of an insti- 
tution of this description. It needs only to be named 
in a commercial community, to be regarded with favor. 
It has already been approved by its good fruits, in the 
experience of many who have enjoyed its advantages ; 
and has received the most favorable notice from dis- 
tinguished gentlemen, who, on former anniversaries, 
have performed the duty which on the present occa- 
sion has devolved upon me. 



6 

Supposing then that the usefulness of such an insti- 
tution is a point too well established to need illustra- 
tion, 1 have thought we should pass our time more 
profitably this evening, by devoting our attention to 
the discussion of a few of the elementary topics con- 
nected with commerce, in reference to which there are 
some prevailing errors, and on which it is important to 
form correct judgments. These topics are, accumula- 
tion, property, capital, and credit ; the simple enun- 
ciation of which as the heads of my address, will sat- 
isfy this most respectable audience, that, without aim- 
ing at display, it is my object to assist those before 
whom I have the honor to appear, in forming right 
notions on plain and practical questions. I may also 
add that the views presented in a single discourse, on 
topics so extensive and important, must necessarily be 
of the most general character. 

I. Some attempts have been made of late years to 
institute a comparison between what have been called 
the producing and the accumulating classes, to the 
disadvantage of the latter. This view I regard as en- 
tirely erroneous. Accumulation is as necessary to far- 
ther production, as production is to accumulation ; 
and especially is accumulation the basis of commerce. 
If every man produced, from day to day, just so much 
as was needed for the day's consumption, there would 
of course be nothing to exchange ; in other words, 
there would be no commerce. Such a state of things 
implies the absence of all civilization. Some degree 
of accumulation was the dictate of the earliest neces- 
sity ; the instinctive struggle of man to protect himself 
from the elements and from want. He soon found — 



such is the exuberance of nature, such the activity of 
her productive powers, and such the rapid develop- 
ment of human skill — that a vast deal more might be 
accumulated than was needed for bare subsistence. 

This, however, alone did not create commerce. If 
all men accumulated equally and accumulated the 
same things, there would still be no exchanges. But 
it soon appeared, in the progress of social man, that no 
two individuals had precisely the same tastes, powers, 
and skill. One excelled in one pursuit, one in another. 
One was more expert as a huntsman, another as a 
fisherman ; and all found that, by making a business 
of some one occupation, they attained a higher degree 
of excellence than was practicable while each one en- 
deavored to do everything for himself. With this dis- 
covery, commerce began. The Indian, who has made 
two bows, or dressed two bear-skins, exchanges one 
of them for a bundle of dried fish or a pair of snow- 
shoes. These exchanges between individuals extend 
to communities. The tribes on the sea-shore ex- 
change the products of their fishing for the game or 
the horses of the plains and hills. Each barters what 
it has in excess, for that which it cannot so well pro- 
duce itself, and which its neighbors possess in abun- 
dance. As individuals differ in their capacities, 
countries differ in soil and climate ; and this differ- 
ence leads to infinite variety of fabrics and produc- 
tions, artificial and natural. Commerce perceives this 
diversity, and organizes a boundless system of ex- 
changes, the object of which is to supply the greatest 
possible amount of want and desire, and to effect the 
widest possible diffusion of useful and convenient pro- 
ducts. The extent to which this exchange of products 



8 

is carried in highly-civilized countries, is truly wonder- 
ful. There are probably few individuals in this as- 
sembly who took their morning's meal this day, with- 
out the use of articles brought from almost every part 
of the world. The table on which it was served was 
made from a tree which grew on the Spanish main or 
one of the West-India islands, and it was covered 
with a table-cloth from St. Petersburg or Archangel. 
The tea was from China ; the coffee from Java ; the 
sugar from Cuba or Louisiana ; the silver spoons from 
Mexico or Peru ; the cups and saucers from England 
or France. Each of these articles was purchased by 
an exchange of other products — the growth of our 
own or foreign countries — collected and distributed 
by a succession of voyages, often to the farthest cor- 
ners of the globe. Without cultivating a rood of 
ground, we taste the richest fruits of every soil. 
Without stirring from our fireside, we collect on our 
tables the growth of every region. In the midst of 
winter, we are served with fruits that ripened in a 
tropical sun ; and struggling monsters are dragged 
from the depths of the Pacific ocean to lighten our 
dwellings. 

As all commerce rests upon accumulation, so the 
accumulation of every individual is made by the ex- 
changes of commerce to benefit every other. Until 
he exchanges it, it is of no actual value to him. The 
tiller of a hundred fields can eat no more, the pro- 
prietor of a cloth factory can wear no more, and the 
owner of a coal mine can sit by no hotter a fire, than 
his neighbors. He must exchange his grain, his cloth 
and his coal for some articles of their production, or 
for money, which is the representative of all other ar- 



9 

tides, before his accumulation is of service to him. 
The system is one of mutual accommodation. No 
man can promote his own interest without promoting 
that of others. As in the system of the universe ev- 
ery particle of matter is attracted by every other par- 
ticle, and it is not possible that a mote in a sunbeam 
should be displaced without producing an effect on 
the orbit of Saturn, so the minutest excess or defect 
in the supply of any one article of human want, pro- 
duces an effect — though of course an insensible one 
— on the exchanges of all other articles. In this way 
that Providence which educes the harmonious system 
of the heavens out of the adjusted motions and bal- 
anced masses of its shining orbs, with equal benevo- 
lence and care furnishes to the countless millions of 
the human family, through an interminable succession 
of exchanges, the supply of their diversified and innu- 
merable wants. 

II. In order to carry on this system of exchanges, 
it is necessary that the articles accumulated should be 
safe in the hands of their owners. The laws of so- 
ciety for the protection of property were founded upon 
the early and instinctive observation of this truth. It 
was perceived, in the dawn of civilization, that the 
only way in which man could elevate himself from 
barbarism and maintain his elevation, was by being se- 
cured in the possession of that which he had saved 
from daily consumption ; this being his resource for a 
time of sickness, for old age, and for the wants of 
those dependent upon him ; as well as the fund out of 
which, by a system of mutually beneficial exchanges, 
each could contribute to the supply of the wants of 



10 

his fellow-men. To strike at the principle which pro- 
tects his earnings or his acquisitions, — to destroy the 
assurance that the field which he has enclosed and 
planted in his youth will remain for the support of his 
advanced years, that the portion of its fruits which 
he does not need for immediate consumption will re- 
main a safe deposit, under the protection of the public 
peace — is to destroy the life-spring of civilization. The 
philosophy that denounces accumulation, is the philos- 
ophy of barbarism. It places man below the condi- 
tion of most of the native tribes on this continent. 
No man will voluntarily sow that another may reap. 
You may place a man in a paradise of plenty on this 
condition, but its abundance will ripen and decay un- 
heeded. At this moment, the fairest regions of the 
earth — Sicily, Turkey, Africa, the loveliest and most 
fertile portions of the East, the regions that, in an- 
cient times, after feeding their own numerous and 
mighty cities, nourished Rome and her armies — are 
occupied by oppressed and needy races, whom all 
the smiles of heaven and the bounties of the earth 
cannot tempt to strike a spade into the soil, farther 
than is requisite for a scanty supply of necessary food. 
On the contrary, establish the principle that property 
is safe, that a man is secure in the possession of his 
accumulated earnings, and he creates a paradise on a 
barren heath ; alpine solitudes echo to the lowing of 
his herds ; he builds up his dykes against the ocean 
and cultivates a field beneath the level of its waves ; 
and exposes his life fearlessly in sickly jungles and 
among ferocious savages. Establish the principle that 
his property is his own, and he seems almost willing 
to sport with its safety. He will trust it all in a single 



11 

vessel, and stand calmly by while she unmoors for a 
voyage of circumnavigation around the globe. He 
knows that the sovereignty of his country accompa- 
nies it with a sort of earthly omnipresence, and guards 
it as vigilantly, in the loneliest island of the Antarctic 
sea, as though it were locked in his coffers at home. 
He is not afraid to send it out upon the common path- 
way of the ocean, for he knows that the sheltering 
wings of the law of nations will overshadow it there. 
He sleeps quietly, though all that he has is borne upon 
six inches of plank on the bosom of the unfathomed 
waters ; for even if the tempest should bury it in the 
deep, he has assured himself against ruin, by the 
agency of those institutions which modern civilization 
has devised for the purpose of averaging the losses of 
individuals upon the mass. 

III. It is usual to give the name of capital to 
those accumulations of property which are employed 
in carrying on the commercial as well as the other 
business operations of the community. The remarks 
already made will enable us to judge, in some degree, 
of the reasonableness of those prejudices which are 
occasionally awakened at the sound of this word. 
Capital is property which a man has acquired by his 
industry, or has, under the law of the land, become 
possessed of in some other way ; and which is invested 
by him in that form and employed in that manner 
which best suit his education, ability, and taste. No 
particular amount of property constitutes capital. In 
a highly prosperous community, the capital of one 
man, like the late baron Rothschild at London, or of 
Stephen Girard at Philadelphia, may amount to eight 



12 

or ten millions ; the capital of his neighbor may not 
exceed as many dollars. In fact, one of these two ex- 
traordinary men and the father of the other passed 
from one extreme to the other in this scale of pros- 
perity ; and the same law which protected their little 
pittance at the outset, protected the millions amassed 
by their perseverance, industry, and talent. 

Considering capital as the mainspring of the business 
operations of civilized society — as that which, dif- 
fused in proportionate masses, is the material on which 
enterprise works and with which industry performs its 
wonders, equally necessary and in the same way ne- 
cessary for the construction of a row-boat and an In- 
diaman, a pair of shoes and a railroad — I have been 
at some loss to account for the odium which at times 
has been attempted to be cast on capitalists as a class ; 
and particularly for the contrast in which capital has 
been placed with labor, to the advantageous employ- 
ment of which it is absolutely essential. 

I have supposed that some part of this prejudice 
may arise from the traditions of other times and the 
institutions of other countries. The roots of opinion 
run deep into the past. The great mass of property 
in Europe, at the present day, even in England, 
is landed property. This property was much of it 
wrested from its original owners by the ancestors of 
its present possessors, who overran the countries with 
military violence and despoiled the inhabitants of their 
possessions ; or still worse, compelled them to labor as 
slaves on the land they had once owned and tilled as 
free men. It is impossible that an hereditary bit- 
terness should not have sprung out of this relation 
never to be mitigated, particularly where the political 



13 

institutions of society remain upon a feudal basis. We 
know from history, that after the Norman invasion, the 
Saxon peasantry, reduced to slavery, were compelled 
to wear iron collars about their necks like dogs, with 
the names of their masters inscribed upon them. At 
what subsequent period, from that time to this, has 
anything occurred to alleviate the feelings growing out 
of these events ? Such an origin of the great mass 
of the property must place its proprietors in some such 
relation to the rest of the community, as that which 
exists between the Turks and Rayas in the Ottoman 
empire, and may have contributed to produce an he- 
reditary hostility on the part of the poor toward the 
rich, among thousands who know not historically the 
origin of the feeling.* 

It is obvious that the origin of our political commu- 
nities and the organization of society among us, fur- 
nish no basis for a prejudice of this kind against capi- 
tal. Wealth in this country may be traced back to 
industry and frugality ; the paths which lead to it are 
open to all ; the laws which protect it are equal to 
all ; and such is the joint operation of the law and 
the customs of society, that the wheel of fortune is in 
constant revolution, and the poor in one generation 
furnish the rich of the next. The rich man, who 
treats poverty with arrogance and contempt, tramples 
upon the ashes of his father or his grandfather ; the 
poor man who nourishes feelings of unkindness and 
bitterness against wealth, makes war with the pros- 
pects of his children and the order of things in which 
he lives. 

A moment's consideration will show the unreasona- 

* See Note at the end. 



14 

bleness of a prejudice against capital, for it will show 
that it is the great instrument of the business move- 
ments of society. Without it there can be no exer- 
cise on a large scale of the mechanic arts, no manufac- 
tures, no private improvements, no public enterprises 
of utility, no domestic exchanges, no foreign com- 
merce. For all these purposes a twofold use of capital 
is needed. It is necessary that a great many persons 
should have a portion of capital ; as for instance, that 
the fisherman should have his boat ; the husbandman 
his farm, his buildings, his implements of husbandry, 
and his cattle ; the mechanic his shop and his tools ; 
the merchant his stock in trade. But these small 
masses of capital are not alone sufficient for the high- 
est degree of prosperity. Larger accumulations are 
wanted to keep the smaller capitals in steady move- 
ment and to circulate their products. If manufactures 
are to flourish, a very great outlay in buildings, fix- 
tures, machinery, and power, is necessary. If inter- 
nal intercourse is to diffuse its inestimable moral, so- 
cial and economical blessings through the land, canals, 
railroads and steamboats are to be constructed at vast 
expense. To effect these objects, capital must go 
forth like a mighty genius, bidding the mountains to 
bow their heads and the vallies to rise, the crooked 
places to be straight and the rough places plain. If 
agriculture is to be perfected, costly experiments in 
husbandry must be instituted by those who are able to 
advance and can afford to lose the funds which are re- 
quired for the purpose. Commerce, on a large scale, 
cannot flourish without resources adequate to the con- 
struction of large vessels, and their outfit for long voy- 
ages and the exchange of valuable cargoes. The 



15 

eyes of the civilized world are intently fixed upon the 
experiments now making to navigate the Atlantic by 
steam. It is said that the Great Western was built 
and fitted out at an expense of near half a million of 
dollars. The success of the experiment will be not 
more a triumph of genius and of art than of capital. 
The first attempts at the whale-fishery in Massachu- 
setts were made from the South Shore and the island 
of Nantucket, by persons who went out in small boats, 
killed their whale, and returned the same day. This 
limited plan of operations was suitable for the small 
demands of the infant population of New-England. 
But the whales were soon driven from the coast ; the 
population increased, and the demand for the product 
of the fisheries proportionably augmented. It became 
necessary to apply larger capitals to the business. 
Whale-ships were now fitted out at considerable ex- 
pense, which pursued this adventurous occupation 
from Greenland to Brazil. The enterprise thus man- 
ifested awoke the admiration of Europe, and is immor- 
talized in the well-known description by Burke. But 
the business has grown, until the ancient fishing- 
grounds have become the first stations on a modern 
whaling voyage ; and capitals are now required suffi- 
cient to fit out a vessel for an absence of forty months 
and a voyage of circumnavigation. Fifty thousand 
dollars are invested in a single vessel ; she doubles 
Cape Horn, ranges from New South Shetland to the 
coasts of Japan, cruises in unexplored latitudes, stops 
for refreshment at islands before undiscovered, and on 
the basis perhaps of the capital of an individual house 
in New-Bedford or Nantucket, performs an exploit 
which sixty or seventy years ago was thought a great 



16 

object to be effected by the resources of the British 
government. In this branch of business, a capital of 
twelve or fifteen millions of dollars is invested.* Its 
object is to furnish us a cheap and commodious light 
for our winter evenings. The capitalist, it is true, 
desires an adequate interest on his investment ; but 
he can only get this by selling his oil at a price at 
which the public are able and willing to buy it. The 
"overgrown capitalist" employed in this business is 
an overgrown lamplighter. Before he can pocket his 
six-per-cent. he has trimmed the lamp of the cottager 
who borrows an hour from evening to complete her 
day's labor, and has lighted the taper of the pale and 
thought- worn student who is " outwatching the bear," 
over some ancient volume. 

In like manner the other great investments of capi- 
tal — whatever selfish objects their proprietors may 
have — must, before that object can be attained, have 
been the means of supplying the demand of the peo- 
ple for some great article of necessity, convenience, 
or indulgence. This remark applies peculiarly to 
manufactures carried on by machinery. A great capi- 
tal is invested in this form, though mostly in small 
amounts. Its owners no doubt seek a profitable re- 
turn ; but this they can attain in no other way than 
by furnishing the community with a manufactured ar- 
ticle of great and extensive use. Strike out of being 
the capital invested in manufactures, and you lay upon 
society the burden of doing by hand all the work 

* A writer, who appears to understand the subject thoroughly, in an arti- 
cle in the North American Review for January, 1834, calculates that a cap- 
ital of twelve millions of dollars is employed in carrying on the whale fish- 
ery, and that an amount of seventy millions of dollars is directly or re- 
motely involved in it. 



17 

which was done by steam and water, by lire and steel ; 
or it must forego the use of the articles manufactured. 
Each result would in some measure be produced. A 
much smaller quantity of manufactured articles would 
be consumed, that is, the community would be de- 
prived of comforts they now enjoy ; and those used 
would be produced at greater cost by manual la- 
bor. In other words, fewer people would be sustained, 
and those less comfortably and at greater expense. 
When we hear persons condemning accumulations of 
capital employed in manufactures, we cannot help say- 
ing to ourselves, is it possible that any rational man 
can desire to stop those busy wheels, — to paralize 
those iron arms, — to arrest that falling stream, which 
works while it babbles ? What is your object ? Do 
you wish wholly to deprive society of the fruit of the 
industry of these inanimate but untiring laborers ? 
Or do you wish to lay on aching human shoulders 
the burdens which are so lightly borne by these pa- 
tient metallic giants ?* Look at Lowell. Behold 
the palaces of her industry side by side with her 
churches and her school-houses, the long lines of her 
shops and warehouses, her streets filled with the 
comfortable abodes of an enterprising, industrious, and 
intelligent population. See her fiery Sampsons roaring 
along her railroad with thirty laden cars in their train. 
Look at her watery Goliahs, not wielding a weaver's 
beam like him of old, but giving motion to hundreds 
and thousands of spindles and looms. Twenty years 
ago, and two or three poor farms occupied the entire 

* At the time this Address was delivered, I was unacquainted with the 
little work entitled " John Hopkins's Notions on Political Economy," where 
the same comparison of machines to giants is very ingeniously pursued. 
3 



18 

space within the boundaries of Lowell. Not more 
visibly, I had almost said not more rapidly, was the 
palace of Aladdin, in the Arabian tales, constructed by 
the genius of the lamp, than this noble city of the arts 
has been built by the genius of capital. This capital, 
it is true, seeks a moderate interest on the investment ; 
but it is by furnishing to all who desire it the cheapest 
garment ever worn by civilized man. To denounce 
the capital which has been the agent of this wonder- 
ful and beneficent creation, — to wage war with a 
system which has spread and is spreading plenty 
throughout the country, what is it but to play in real 
life the part of the malignant sorcerer in the same 
eastern tale, who, potent only for mischief, utters the 
baleful spell which breaks the charm, heaves the 
mighty pillars of the palace from their foundation, 
converts the fruitful gardens back to their native ster- 
ility, and heaps the abodes of life and happiness with 
silent and desolate ruins ? 

It is hardly possible to realize the effects on human 
comfort of the application of capital to the arts of life. 
We can fully do this, only by making some inquiry 
into the mode of living in civilized countries in the 
middle ages. The following brief notices, from Mr. 
Hallam's learned and judicious work, may give us 
some distinct ideas on the subject. Up to the time of 
queen Elizabeth in England, the houses of the farmers 
in that country consisted of but one story and one 
room. They had no chimnies. The fire was kin- 
dled on a hearth of clay in the centre, and the smoke 
found its way out through an aperture in the roof, at 
the door, and the openings at the side for air and light. 
The domestic animals — even oxen — were received 



19 

under the same roof with their owners. Glass win- 
dows were unknown except in a few lordly mansions, 
and in them they were regarded as moveable furniture. 
When the dukes of Northumberland left Alnwick castle 
to come to London for the winter, the few glass win- 
dows, which formed one of the luxuries of the castle, 
were carefully taken out and laid away, perhaps carried 
to London to adorn the city residence. The walls of 
good houses were neither wainscoated nor plaistered. 
In the houses of the nobility the nakedness of the walls 
was covered by hangings of coarse cloth. Beds were 
a rare luxury. A very wealthy individual would have 
one or two in his house : rugs and skins laid upon 
the floor were the substitute. Neither books nor pic- 
tures formed any part of the furniture of a dwelling 
in the middle ages ; as printing and engraving were 
wholly unknown and painting but little practiced. A 
few inventories of furniture dating from the fifteenth 
century are preserved. They afford a striking evidence 
of the want of comfort and accommodation in articles 
accounted by us among the necessaries of life. In the 
schedule of the furniture of a signor Contarini, a rich 
Venetian merchant living in London in 1481, no 
chairs nor looking-glasses are named. Carpets were 
unknown at the same period : their place was sup- 
plied by straw and rushes, even in the presence-cham- 
ber of the sovereign. Skipton castle, the principal 
residence of the earls of Cumberland, was deemed 
amply provided in having eight beds, but had neither 
chairs, glasses, nor carpets. The silver-plate of Mr. 
Fermor, a wealthy country gentleman at Easton, in 
the sixteenth century, consisted of sixteen spoons and 
a few goblets and ale-pots. Some valuations of stock- 



20 

in-trade in England from the beginning of the four- 
teenth century, have been preserved. A carpenter's 
consisted of five tools, the whole valued at a shilling ; 
a tanner's, on the other hand, amounted to near ten 
pounds, ten times greater than any other, — tanners 
being at that period principal tradesmen, as almost all 
articles of dress for men were made of leather. 

We need but contrast the state of things in our own 
time with that which is indicated in these facts, to 
perceive the all-important influence on human comfort 
of the accumulation of capital and its employment in 
the useful arts of life. As it is out of the question for 
the government to invest the public funds in the 
branches of industry necessary to supply the custom- 
ary wants of men, it follows that this must be done by 
private resources and enterprise. The necessary con- 
sequence is, that the large capital required for these 
operations must be furnished by the contributions of 
individuals, each possessing a portion of the stock, or 
by a single proprietor. 

It is rather remarkable that the odium, of which all 
capital in large masses has sometimes been the sub- 
ject, should be directed more against the former, — 
namely, joint-stock companies, — than against large 
individual capitals. This, however, appears to be the 
fact. Some attempts have been made to organize 
public sentiment against associated wealth, as it has 
been called, without reflecting, as it would seem, that 
these associations are the only means by which per- 
sons of moderate property are enabled to share the 
profits of large investments. Were it not for these 
associations in this country, no pursuit could be car- 
ried on, except those within the reach of individual 



21 

resources ; and none but very rich persons would be 
able to follow those branches of industry, which now 
diffuse their benefits among persons of moderate for- 
tune. In which part of this alternative a conformity 
with the genius of our political institutions exists, need 
not be labored. 

But whether the masses of capital necessary to 
carry on the great operations of trade are derived from 
the association of several or from the exclusive resour- 
ces of one, it is plain that the interest of the capital, 
however formed, is identical with that of the commu- 
nity. Nobody hoards, — everything is invested or em- 
ployed, and directly or indirectly is the basis of busi- 
ness operations. 

It is true that when one man uses the capital of 
another, he is expected to pay something for this priv- 
ilege. But there is nothing unjust or unreasonable in 
this. It is inherent in the idea of property. It would 
not be property, if I could take it from you and use it 
as my own without compensation. That simple word, 
it is mine, carries with it the whole theory of prop- 
erty and its rights. If my neighbor has saved his 
earnings and built him a house with it, and I ask his 
leave to go and live in it, I ought in justice to pay him 
for the use of his house. If, instead of using his 
money to build a house in which he permits me to 
live, he loans me his money, with which I build a 
house for myself, it is equally just that I should pay 
him for the use of his money. It is his, not mine. 
If he allows me to use the fruit of his labor or skill, I 
ought to pay him for that use, as I should pay him if 
he came and wrought for me with his hands. This is 
the whole doctrine of interest. In a prosperous com- 



22 

munity, capital can be made to produce a greater re- 
turn than the rate of interest fixed by law. The 
merchant who employs the whole of his capital in his 
own enterprises and takes all the profit to himself, is 
commonly regarded as a useful citizen ; it would seem 
unreasonable to look with a prejudiced eye upon the 
capitalist, who allows all the profits of the business to 
accrue to others, asking only legal interest for his 
money, which they have employed. 

Without, however, pursuing this comparison among 
different classes of capitalists, let us farther endeavor, 
by an example, to illustrate the question, whether they 
ought in any view to be regarded as exerting an un- 
friendly influence on the labors of the community. 
Take, for instance, such a case as Mr. Stephen Gi- 
rard, a great capitalist, who united in his person the 
merchant and the banker, and who may be spoken of 
plainly, as he has passed away — the solitary man — 
and left no one to be grieved with the freedoms which 
are taken with his memory. This remarkable person 
began life without a farthing, and left behind him a 
property, whose actual value amounted to seven or 
eight millions of dollars, and this acquired in the latter 
half of his life. He told me himself, that at the age 
of forty, his circumstances were so narrow that he was 
employed as the commander of his own sloop, en- 
gaged in the coasting trade between New- York or 
Philadelphia and New-Orleans ; adding, that on a cer- 
tain occasion he was forty-five days in working his 
way up from the Balize to the city. Few persons, I 
believe, enjoyed less personal popularity in the commu- 
nity in which he lived, and to which he bequeathed 
his princely fortune. If this proceeded from defects 



23 

of personal character, it is a topic which we have no 
occasion to discuss here. We are authorized only to 
speak of the effect upon the public welfare of the accu- 
mulation of such a fortune in one man's hands. While 
I am far from saying that it might not have been 
abused by being made the instrument of a corrupt and 
dangerous influence in the community, I have never 
heard that it was so abused by Mr. Girard ; and, on 
general principles, it may perhaps be safely said that 
the class of men qualified to amass large fortunes by 
perseverance and exclusive devotion to business, by 
frugality and thrift, are not at all likely to apply their 
wealth to ambitious or corrupt designs. As to the 
effect in all other points of view, I confess I see noth- 
ing but public benefit in such a capital, managed with 
unrelaxing economy ; one half judiciously employed 
by the proprietor himself in commerce ; the other half 
loaned to the business community. What better use 
could have been made of it ? Will it be said, divide it 
equally among the community ; give each individual in 
the United States a share ? It would have amounted to 
half a dollar each for man, woman, and child ; and, 
of course, might as well have been sunk in the middle 
of the sea. Such a distribution would have been 
another name for annihilation. How many ships 
would have furled their sails, how many warehouses 
would have closed their shutters, how many wheels, 
heavily laden with the products of industry, would 
have stood still, how many families would have been 
reduced to want, and without any advantage result- 
ing from the distribution ! 

Let me not be misunderstood. I regard equality of 
condition and fortune as the happiest state of society, 



24 

and those political institutions as immeasurably the 
wisest and best, which tend to produce it. All laws 
which have for their object to perpetuate large estates 
and transmit them from generation to generation, are 
at war with the constitution of man. Providence has 
written a statute of distributions on the face of nature 
and the heart of man ; and whenever its provisions are 
contravened by political enactments, a righteous con- 
juration to subvert them springs up in the very ele- 
ments of our being. My proposition is only, that, in 
a country like this, where the laws forbid hereditary 
transmission and encourage equality of fortune, accu- 
mulations of capital made by industry, enterprise, and 
prudence, employed in active investments, without 
ministering to extravagance and luxury, are beneficial 
to the public. Their possessor becomes, whether he 
wills it or not, the steward of others ; not merely, as 
in Mr. Girard's case, because he may destine a colossal 
fortune after his decease for public objects, but because, 
while he lives, every dollar of it must be employed in 
giving life to industry and employment to labor. Had 
Mr. Girard lived in a fashionable part of the city, in a 
magnificent house ; had he surrounded himself with a 
troop of livered domestics ; had he dazzled the passers 
by with his splendid equipages, and spread a sumptu- 
ous table for his "dear five hundred friends," he would 
no doubt have been a more popular man. But in my 
apprehension he appears to far greater advantage, as a 
citizen and a patriot, in his modest dwelling and plain 
garb, appropriating to his personal wants the smallest 
pittance from his princely income ; living to the last in 
the dark and narrow street in which he made his for- 
tune, and when he died, bequeathing it for the educa- 



25 

tion of orphan children. For the public, I do not 
know that he could have done better ; of all the men 
in the world he probably derived the least enjoyment 
from his property himself. 

IV. I have left myself scarce any room to speak 
on the subject of credit. The legitimate province of 
credit is to facilitate and to diffuse the use of capital, 
and not to create it. I make this remark with care, 
because views prevail on this subject exaggerated and 
even false ; which, carried into the banking system, 
have done infinite mischief. I have no wish whatever 
to depreciate the importance of credit. It has done 
wonders for this country. It has promoted public and 
private prosperity ; built cities, cleared wildernesses, 
and bound the remotest parts of the continent to- 
gether by chains of iron and gold. These are won- 
ders, but not miracles ; these effects have been pro- 
duced not without causes. Trust and confidence are 
not gold and silver ; they command capital, but they 
do not create it. A merchant in active business has a 
capital of twenty thousand dollars ; his credit is good ; 
he borrows as much more ; but let him not think he 
has doubled his capital. He has done so only in a 
very limited sense. He doubles the sum on which for 
a time he trades ; but he has to pay back the bor- 
rowed capital with interest ; and that, whether his 
business has been prosperous or adverse. Still, I am 
not disposed to deny that, with extreme prudence 
and good management, the benefit to the individual of 
such an application of credit is great ; and when indi- 
viduals are benefited, the public is benefited. But 
no capital has been created. Nothing has been added 



26 

to the pre-existing stock. It was in being — the fruit 
of former accumulation. If he had not borrowed it, it 
might have been used by its owner in some other way. 
What the public gains, is the superior activity that is 
given to business by bringing more persons, with a 
greater amount and variety of talent, into action. 

These benefits, public and private, are not without 
some counterbalancing risks ; and with the enterprising 
habits and ardent temperament of our countrymen, 1 
should deem the formation of sound and sober views 
on the subject of credit, one of the most desirable por- 
tions of the young merchant's education. The eager- 
ness to accumulate wealth by trading on credit, is the 
disease of the age and country in which we live. 
Something of the solidity of our character and purity 
of our name has been sacrificed to it. Let us hope 
that the recent embarrassments of the commercial 
world will have a salutary influence in repressing 
this eagerness. The merchants of the country have 
covered themselves with lasting honor abroad, by the 
heroic fidelity with which they have, at vast sacrifices, 
fulfilled their obligations. Let us hope that hereafter 
they will keep themselves more beyond the reach of 
the fluctuations in business and the vicissitudes of 
affairs. 

But it is time to close these general reflections. 
We live at a period when the commerce of the world 
seems touching a new era ; a development of ener- 
gies before unconceived. Columbus discovered a new 
continent ; modern art has diminished by one half its 
distance from the old world. The application of 
steam to the navigation of the ocean seems about to 
put the finishing hand to that system of accelerated 



27 

communication, which began with steamboats along 
the coast, and canals and railroads piercing the inte- 
rior. The immediate effect of this improvement must 
be a vast increase of the intensity of international 
communication. The ultimate result can be but 
dimly foreseen. Let us trust that it will give renewed 
vigor to the march of civilization ; that it will increase 
the comforts of those who now enjoy its blessings, — 
and extend these blessings to the forlorn children of 
the human family, who are at present deprived of 
them. 

Whatever may take place in this respect ; wheth- 
er or not the navigation of the Atlantic ocean by 
steam vessels is to be generally adopted as the mode 
of communication, commerce, no doubt, in virtue of 
other causes of ascertained and unquestioned opera- 
tion, is on the eve of acquiring an activity beyond 
all previous example. As in all former ages it has 
been one of the most powerful agents in shaping the 
destinies of the human race, it is unquestionably 
reserved for still higher functions. I confess, that I 
look myself for some great results, to be produced by 
the new forces in motion around us. When we con- 
template the past, we see some of the most important 
phenomena in human history intimately — I had al- 
most said mysteriously — connected with commerce. 
In the very dawn of civilization, the art of alphabetical 
writing sprang up among a commercial people. One 
can almost imagine that these wonderfully convenient 
elements were a kind of short-hand, which the Phoeni- 
cian merchants, under the spur of necessity, contrived 
for keeping their accounts ; for what could they have 
done with the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian priest- 



28 

hood, applied to the practical purposes of a commerce 
which extended over the known world, and of which 
we have preserved to us such a curious and instructive 
description by the prophet Ezekiel ? A thousand years 
later, and the same commercial race among whom this 
sublime invention had its origin, performed a not less 
glorious part as the champions of freedom. When the 
Macedonian madman commenced his crusade against 
Asia, the Phoenicians opposed the only vigorous resist- 
ance to his march. The Tynan merchants delayed 
him longer beneath the walls of their sea-girt city, 
than Darius at the head of all the armies of the East. 
In the succeeding centuries, when the dynasties estab- 
lished by Alexander were crumbling, and the Romans 
in turn took up the march of universal conquest and 
dominion, the commercial city of Carthage, — the 
daughter of Tyre, — afforded the most efficient check 
to their progress. But there was nowhere sufficient 
security for property in the old world, to form the 
basis of a permanent commercial prosperity. In the 
middle ages, the iron-yoke of the feudal system was 
broken by commerce. The emancipation of Europe 
from the detestable sway of the barons, began with the 
privileges granted to the cities. The wealth acquired 
in commerce afforded the first counterpoise to that of 
the feudal chiefs who monopolized the land, and in 
the space of a century and a half, gave birth to 
a new civilization. In the west of Europe, the 
Hanse towns ; in the east, the cities of Venice, Ge- 
noa, the ports of Sicily and Naples, Florence, Pisa, 
and Leghorn, begin to swarm with active crowds. 
The Mediterranean, deserted for nearly ten centuries, 
is covered with vessels. Merchants from the Adriatic 



29 

explore the farthest east : silks, spices, gums, gold, are 
distributed from the Italian cities through Europe, and 
the dawn of a general revival breaks on the world. 
Nature, at this juncture, discloses another of those 
mighty mysteries, which man is permitted from age to 
age to read in her awful volume. As the fullness of 
time approaches for the new world to be found, it is 
discovered that a piece of steel may be so prepared, 
that it will point a steady index to the pole. After it 
had led the adventurers of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, 
to the utmost limits of the old world, — from Iceland 
to the south of Africa, — the immortal Discoverer, with 
the snows and the sorrows of near sixty years upon his 
head, but with the fire of immortal youth in his heart, 
placed himself under the guidance of the mysterious 
pilot, bravely followed its mute direction through the 
terrors and the dangers of the unknown sea, and called 
a new hemisphere into being. 

It would be easy to connect with this discovery al- 
most all the great events of modern history, and, still 
more, all the great movements of modern civilization. 
Even in the colonization of New-England, although 
more than almost any other human enterprise the off- 
spring of the religious feeling, commercial adventure 
opened the way and furnished the means. As time 
rolled on, and events hastened to their consummation, 
commercial relations suggested the chief topics in the 
great controversy for liberty. The British Navigation 
Act was the original foundation of the colonial griev- 
ances. There was a constant struggle to break away 
from the limits of the monopoly imposed by the mother 
country. The American navigators could find no 
walls nor barriers on the face of the deep, and they 



30 

were determined that paper and parchment should not 
shut up what God had thrown open. The moment 
the war of independence was over, the commercial en- 
terprise of the country went forth like an uncaged ea- 
gle, who, having beaten himself almost to madness 
against the bars of his prison, rushes out at length to 
his native element, and exults as he bathes his undaz- 
zled eye in the sunbeam or pillows his breast upon 
the storm. Our merchants were far from contenting 
themselves with treading obsequiously in the footsteps 
even of the great commercial nation from which we 
are descended. Ten years had not elapsed from the 
close of the revolutionary war, before the infant com- 
merce of America had struck out for herself a circuit in 
some respects broader and bolder than that of Eng- 
land. Besides penetrating the remotest haunts of the 
commerce heretofore carried on by the trading nations 
of Europe — the recesses of the Mediterranean, the 
Baltic, and the White seas — she displayed the stars 
and the stripes in distant oceans, where the Lion and 
the Lilies never floated. She not only engaged with 
spirit in the trade with Hindostan and China, which 
had been thought to be beyond the grasp of individual 
capital and enterprise, but she explored new markets 
on islands and coasts before unapproached by modern 
commerce. 

Such was the instantaneous expansion of the youth- 
ful commerce of America. The belligerent condition 
of Europe for a time favored the enterprise of our 
merchants ; wealth began to pour into their coffers ; 
and they immediately took that place in the commu- 
nity to which events and the condition of the country 
called them. Independence found us, in a great meas- 



31 

ure, destitute of public establishments ; the eyes of 
the people were unconsciously turned to the mer- 
chants, as the chief depositories of large masses of 
disposable wealth ; and they promptly stood forth as 
public benefactors. It may certainly be said without 
adulation, that the merchants of Massachusetts have 
sustained this character as honorably as their fellow- 
citizens in any part of the Union. In all the great en- 
terprises for public improvement, in all our establish- 
ments for religious, moral, literary and charitable purpo- 
ses, the genial patronage of commerce has been steadily 
felt. Our merchants have indeed been princes, in the 
pure and only republican sense of the word, in be- 
stowing princely endowments on the public institu- 
tions ; and to him who asks for the monuments of 
their liberality, we may say, as of the architect of St. 
Paul's, " Look around you." In every part of the old 
world, except England, the public establishments, the 
foundations for charity, education, and literary improve- 
ment have been mostly endowed by the sovereign ; 
and costly private edifices are generally the monu- 
ments of an opulence which had its origin in feudal 
inequality. If displays of wealth are witnessed in our 
cities, it is wealth originally obtained by frugality and 
enterprise ; and of which a handsome share has been 
appropriated to the endowment of those charitable and 
philanthropic institutions, which are the distinguishing 
glory of modern times. 

To understand the character of the commerce of our 
own city, we must not look merely at one point, but 
at the whole circuit of country, of which it is the bu- 
siness centre. We must not contemplate it only at 
this present moment of time, but we must bring before 



32 

our imaginations, as in the shifting scenes of a diorama, 
at least three successive historical and topographical 
pictures ; and truly instructive I think it would be, to 
see them delineated on canvas. We must survey the 
first of them in the company of the venerable John 
Winthrop, the founder of the State. Let us go up 
with him, on the day of his landing, the seventeenth 
of June, 1630, to the heights of yonder peninsula, as 
yet without a name. Landward stretches a dismal 
forest ; seaward a waste of waters, unspotted with a 
sail, except that of his own ship. At the foot of the 
hill, you see the cabins of Walford and the Spragues, 
who, the latter a year before, the former still earlier, 
had adventured to this spot, untenanted else by any 
child of civilization. On the other side of the river 
lies Mr. Blackstone's farm. It comprises three goodly 
hills, converted by a spring-tide into three wood- 
crowned islets ; and it is mainly valued for a noble 
spring of fresh water, which gushes from the northern 
slope of one of these hills, and which furnished, in the 
course of the summer, the motive for transferring the 
seat of the infant settlement. This shall be the first 
picture. 

The second shall be contemplated from the same 
spot, the heights of Charlestown ; on the same day, 
the eventful seventeenth of June, one hundred and 
forty-five years later, namely, in the year 1775. A 
terrific scene of war rages on the top of the hill. Wait 
for a favorable moment, when the volumes of fiery 
smoke roll away, and over the masts of that sixty-gun 
ship, whose batteries are blazing upon the hill, you 
behold Mr. Blackstone's farm changed to an ill-built 
town of about two thousand dwelling-houses, mostly 



33 

of wood, with scarce any public buildings but eight or 
nine churches, the old State-house, and Faneuil Hall ; 
Roxbury beyond, an insignificant village ; a vacant 
marsh, in all the space now occupied by Cambridge- 
port and East Cambridge, by Chelsea and East Bos- 
ton ; and beneath your feet the town of Charlestown, 
consisting in the morning of a line of about three hun- 
dred houses, wrapped in a sheet of flames at noon, 
and reduced at eventide to a heap of ashes. 

But those fires are kindled on the altar of liberty. 
American independence is established. American 
commerce smiles on the spot ; and now from the top of 
one of the triple hills of Mr. Blackstone's farm, a stately 
edifice arises, which seems to invite us as to an ob- 
servatory. As we look down from this lofty structure, 
we behold the third picture : a crowded, busy scene. 
We see beneath us a city containing eighty or ninety 
thousand inhabitants, and mainly built of brick and 
granite. Vessels of every description are moored at 
the wharves. Long lines of commodious and even 
stately houses cover a space which, within the memory 
of man, was in a state of nature. Substantial blocks 
of warehouses and stores have forced their way to the 
channel. Faneuil Hall itself, the consecrated and 
unchangeable, has swelled to twice its original di- 
mensions. Athenaeums, hospitals, asylums, and in- 
firmaries, adorn the streets. The school-house rears 
its modest front in every quarter of the city, and 
sixty or seventy churches attest that the children 
are content to walk in the good old ways of their 
fathers. Connected with the city by eight bridges, 
avenues, or ferries, you behold a range of towns 
most of them municipally distinct, but all of them 



34 

in reality forming with Boston one vast metrop- 
olis, animated by one commercial life. Shading off 
from these, you see that most lovely back-ground, a 
succession of happy settlements, spotted with villas, 
farm-houses and cottages ; united to Boston by a con- 
stant intercourse ; sustaining the capital from their 
fields and gardens, and prosperous in the reflux of the 
city's wealth. Of the social life included within this 
circuit, and of all that in times past has adorned and 
ennobled it, commercial industry has been an active ele- 
ment, and has exalted itself by its intimate association 
with everything else we hold dear. Within this cir- 
cuit what memorials strike the eye ; what recollec- 
tions ; what institutions ; what patriotic treasures and 
names that cannot die ! There lie the canonized pre- 
cincts of Lexington and Concord ; there rise the 
sacred heights of Dorchester and Charlestown ; there 
is Harvard, the ancient and venerable, foster-child 
of public and private liberality in every part of the 
State ; to whose existence Charlestown gave the first 
impulse, to whose growth and usefulness the opulence 
of Boston has at all times ministered with open hand. 
Still farther on than the eye can reach, four lines of 
communication by railroad and steam have within our 
own day united with the capital, by bands of iron, a 
still broader circuit of towns and villages. Hark to 
the voice of life and business which sounds along the 
lines ! While we speak, one of them is shooting on- 
ward to the illimitable west, and all are uniting with 
the other kindred enterprises, to form one harmonious 
and prosperous whole, in which town and country, ag- 
riculture and manufactures, labor and capital, art and 
nature — wrought and compacted into one grand sys- 



35 

tern — are constantly gathering and diffusing, concen- 
trating and radiating the economical, the social, the 
moral blessings of a liberal and diffusive commerce. 

In mere prosperity and the wealth it diffuses, there 
is no ground for moral approbation ; though I believe 
in any long period of time it will be found that those 
communities only are signally prosperous where vir- 
tuous principle is revered as the rule of conduct. It is 
the chief glory of our commercial community, that the 
old standard of morals is still kept up ; that industry 
and frugality are still held in honorable repute ; that 
the rage for speculation has not eaten out the vitals of 
character, and that lucky fraud, though plated stiff 
with ill-gotten treasure, dare not yet lift up its bold, 
unblushing face in the presence of the humblest man, 
who eats the bread of honest industry. 

So may it still remain ; and let it still be your ob- 
ject, gentlemen of the Mercantile Library Association, 
to uphold this well-approved character of our ancient 
metropolis. Never let the mere acquisition of wealth 
be an exclusive pursuit. Consider it of tenfold im- 
portance to manifest, in all the transactions of life, that 
quick sense of honor " which feels a stain like a 
wound," and that integrity which the mines of Peru 
could not bend from the path of principle. Let 
wealth be regarded as the instrument of doing as well 
as of enjoying good. In a republican government, 
the mercantile class, in the natural course of things, is 
the only one whose members, generally speaking, can 
amass fortune ; let it be written on your hearts in the 
morning of life, that wealth is ennobled only in its 
uses. Form, from the first, a large conception of the 
character of the liberal and upright merchant. Regard 
him as one to whom the country looks to sustain her 



36 

honor in the hour of trial ; to uphold her public estab- 
lishments, to endow her charities, to be the father of 
her orphans : as one whom no success will make 
ashamed of his vocation ; who will adorn his days of 
prosperity with moderation and temper ; and hold fast 
his integrity, though fortunes turn to ashes in his grasp. 
Improve the opportunities for cultivating your minds 
which this institution present, never greater than at 
this season ; and the still farther and peculiar oppor- 
tunities for mental improvement, which will shortly be 
placed within the reach of the young men of Boston, in 
consequence of the recent munificent bequest of Mr. 
Lowell. The keys of knowledge are in your hands ; 
the portals of her temple are open to you. On the 
shelves of her libraries there are stores of information, 
which, besides contributing to your success in your 
calling, will give grace to good fortune, and comfort 
and resource in disaster. Above all, while you pursue 
with spirit the business of your vocation, and follow 
the paths of enterprise to the ends of the earth, let a 
well-instructed conscience be the companion of your 
way. Her guidance will safely lead you, when cal- 
culation is bewildered and prudence is at fault. 
Though your hope in all else be blasted, fail not, my 
young friends, to acquire the pearl of great price, that 
wisdom whose merchandize is better than the mer- 
chandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. 
Let this be the object of your life, and while the 
guilty glories of war are deprecated by mankind and 
the weary honors of successful ambition weigh like 
lead on the wearer, you will enjoy, in the esteem and 
gratitude of the community and the peace of your 
own minds, the happy portion of the liberal and 

UPRIGHT MERCHANT. 



37 



Note to Page 13. 

I am of course aware that the state of things existing in England before 
the invasion of the Normans was, as far as the distribution of property is 
concerned, not materially better than that which followed the conquest. 
The Danes and the Saxons, in their turn, had been military usurpers and 
oppressors. Of the population of England before the conquest, one third 
part, according to the computation of Dr. Lingard, (vol. 1, p. 502) consisted 
of the various classes of freemen, the remaining two-thirds were slaves. 
To reach a period when anything like equality existed in England, it would 
be necessary to go beyond the invasion of Julius Caesar ; and if found un- 
der the gloomy sway of the druidical constitution, it would be an equality 
not greatly differing from that of a tribe of North American savages. 

The effect of the Norman conquest was but to reduce lord and vassal to 
the same level of oppression and want. The flower of the Saxon nobility 
and gentry had perished in the field ; merciless confiscations pursued the 
survivors. " Partly by grant and partly by usurpation," (says Dr. Lingard, 
vol. 2, p. 57) " almost all the lands in the kingdom were transferred to the 
possession of the Normans. The families which, under the Anglo-Saxon 
dynasty, had been distinguished by their opulence and power, successively 
disappeared. Many perished in the different insurrections ; others begged 
their bread in exile, or languished in prison, or dragged on a precarious ex- 
istence under their new lords." The suffering incident to this state of things 
was not in all cases alleviated by the personal character of the conquerors. 
" Individuals, who in their own country (Normandy) had been poor and un- 
known, saw themselves unexpectedly elevated in the scale of society ; they 
were astonished at their own good fortune, and generally displayed in their 
conduct all the arrogance of newly-acquired power. Contempt and oppres- 
sion became the portion of the natives, whose farms were pillaged, females 
violated, and persons imprisoned at the caprice of these petty and local ty- 
rants. ' I will not undertake,' says an ancient writer, ' to describe the mis- 
ery of this wretched people. It would be a painful task to me ; and the ac- 
count would be disbelieved by posterity.' " 

Sir Walter Scott, in allusion to these events, observes that " the great na- 
tional distinctions betwixt the Anglo-Saxons and their conquerors, the recol- 
lection of what they had formerly been and to what they were now reduced, 
continued, down to the reign of Edward the Third, to keep open the wounds 
which the conquest had inflicted, and to maintain a line of separation be- 
tween the descendants of the victor Normans and the vanquished Saxons." 

I fear there is no warrant for assuming the reign of Edward the Third as 
a period after which these social wounds were healed. It is true, our infor- 
mation on points like these is defective. The history of liberty in the states 
of modern Europe is too generally limited to the struggle between the crown 



38 

and the different ranks and classes of the nobility and gentry. The relation 
between the great mass of those by whom the soil is tilled and their land- 
lords of every class, has, till modern times, been but little affected by changes 
in the political constitution, and therefore has not yet been fully illustrated. 
The documents necessary to illustrate it are buried in the darkness of the 
middle ages. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the humble 
struggles and the obscure misery of this portion of the people never found 
their way into an impartial record. Whenever, as in the rebellion of Wat 
Tyler, (which took place under the successor of Edward the Third, and 
near the close of the fourteenth century) they appear in history, it is the 
huntsman who portrays the conquered lion. 

I am sensible that the accumulation of allodial property by commerce, 
manufactures, and the arts, aided by the mingling up, to some extent, of the 
different classes of society, (produced in various ways which I have not 
space here to enumerate) in the lapse of eight centuries, and particularly in 
the last two centuries, must have had the effect of mitigating the feelings to 
which I have alluded ; but I cannot, in any period of English history since 
the conquest, find any great measure, influence, or event, which has radi- 
cally and beneficially changed the relations then established between those 
who own and those who till the soil. The same may be said, and still more 
confidently, of all the continental countries, except France. 

I offer these remarks with diffidence, because I do not remember to have 
seen the proposition which they are meant to establish distinctly stated, in 
reference to property. In reference to government, the political discontents 
of modern times are traced by many writers to the feudal system ; without 
perhaps giving due prominence to the idea that this system was generally 
(though not always) an imposition of the foreign conqueror upon an invaded 
and subjected people. I may refer to President Adams, in his essay on the 
canon and feudal law, published in 1765. Having in that work spoken of 
the canon and feudal law and their joint action, as a conspiracy against the 
liberties of man, he observes, " It was not religion alone, as is commonly 
supposed ; but it was a love of universal liberty, and a hatred, a dread, a 
horror of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted 
and accomplished the settlement of America." 

Sir Henry Vane, in "the Healing Question propounded and resolved," 
traces the political struggle of his day to a principle of resistance to the 
same evil. " If there be," says he, " never so many fair branches of lib- 
erty planted on the root of a private and selfish interest, they will not long pros- 
per, but must, within a little time, wither and degenerate into the nature of 
that whereinto they are planted : and hence indeed sprang the evil of that 
government which rose in and with the Norman conquest. The root and 
bottom upon which it stood was not public interest, but the private lust and 
will of the conqueror, who by force of arms did at first detain the right of 
freedom which was and is due to the whole body of the people ; for whose 
safety and good, government itself is ordained by God, not for the particular 
benefit of the rulers as a distinct and private interest of their own ; which 



39 

yet for the most part is not only preferred before the common good, but 
upheld in opposition thereto." The rest of the passage is not less signifi- 
cant, but allusion appears to be made exclusively to political rights. 

The reason is obvious why the attention of patriotic and liberal men, in 
discussing the abuses of government, has been almost exclusively di- 
rected to the preservation of political rights rather than of property. Prop- 
erty to all practical purposes is what the laws make it. As soon as the war 
of the conquest was over, and the moment the ancient landholders ceased to 
contend, the legal right of the conqueror and his feudal attendant lords, to 
the lands of which they had possessed themselves, was perfect. Every day 
added the strength of prescription to this legal right ; and after the lapse of 
a few generations, although bloody revolutions might disturb possession, it 
would be practically impossible to trace and reinstate the descendants of the 
original owners of the land. They were forever despoiled of their material 
inheritance, and it ceases to be spoken of as a possession originally wrested 
from those to whom it rightfully belonged. But political rights can never 
be so wrested by law that they do not survive for all who at any period are 
able to vindicate or recover them. There are no innocent third persons, no 
bond fide purchasers of public domain, to be injured by the restitution of 
political franchises, to the classes of society that have been deprived of 
them. 

The following extract from a very recent English work of a popular cast, 
" Howitt's rural life in England," discloses a state of things in relation to 
the agricultural population of the north of England and the south of Scot- 
land, which shows that the relations of property established at the conquest, 
even as to the external form, have, in some parts of the country, been less 
mitigated by the hand of time than is generally supposed. The passage is 
from " Chapter 4 — The bondage system of the north of England." " A person 
from the south or midland counties of England, journeying northward, is 
struck, when he enters Durham or Northumberland with the sight of bands 
of women working in the fields under the surveillance of one man. One or 
two such bands, of from half a dozen to a dozen women, generally young, 
might be passed over ; but when they recur again and again, and you ob- 
serve them wherever you go, they become a marked feature of the agricul- 
tural system of the country, and you naturally inquire how it is that such 
regular bands of female laborers prevail there. The answer, in the provin- 
cial tongue, is, " 0, they are the bone-ditches " — i. e. Bondages. Bondages ! 
that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What ! have we bondage, 
a rural serfdom, still existing in free and fair England? Even so. The 
thing is astounding enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first 
time on these female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, 
before making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the 
slave-gangs of the West-Indies. Turnip-hoeing somehow associated itself 
strangely in my brain with sugar-cane dressing. But when I heard these 
women called Bondages, the association became tenfold strong. 

" On all the large estates in these counties and in the south of Scotland, 



40 

the bondage system prevails. No married laborer is permitted to dwell on 
these estates, unless he enters into bond to comply with this system. These 
laborers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for them on the farms, 
and on some of the estates, as those of the duke of Northumberland, all 
these cottages are numbered, and the number is painted on the door. A 
hind, therefore, engaging to work on one of the farms belonging to the es- 
tate, has a house assigned to him. He has four pounds a year in money ; 
the keep of a cow ; his fuel found him, — a prescribed quantity of coal, 
wood, or peat, to each cottage ; he is allowed to plant a certain quantity of 
land with potatoes ; and has thirteen boles of corn furnished him for his 
family consumption, — one third being oats, one third barley, and one third 
peas. In return for these advantages, he is bound to give his labor the year 
round, and also to furnish a woman laborer at one shilling per day during 
harvest, or eight pence per day for the rest of the year." 

Regarding the unequal distribution of property (which, originating in 
the feudal system and in conquest, still exists to a great degree in Europe) 
as the main cause of the discontent and ferment which there prevail, it 
is satisfactory to reflect that the remedy of the evil is mild and simple. 
The enactment of laws like those which exist in this country for the distri- 
bution of estates, aided by an effective system of popular education, would 
unquestionably in two or three generations restore harmony and concord to 
society, and bring the great mass of the physical strength of the community 
into alliance with its moral and intellectual elements. They are at present 
in perilous estrangement. 



ANNIVERSARY POEM, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 



OF BOSTON, 



SEPTEMBER 13, 1838, 



BY JAMES T. FIELDS, 



Member of the Association. 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM D. TICKNOR, 

Corner of Washington and School Streets. 

1838. 



Marden & Kimball, Printers, 

No. 3 School Street. 






^ 



Boston, September 17, 1838. 

At a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association held at their rooms 
*H on the evening of September 14, the Committee of Arrangements were di- 
rected to express to Mr. J&mes T. Fields their thanks for his Poetical 
Address on the evening of their Eighteenth Anniversary, and to request of 
him a copy for publication. 

The Committee of Arrangements, in accordance with the above vote, 
offer you, in behalf of the Association, their thanks for your highly interest- 
ing and beautiful Poem, and ask the favor, as it is the universally expressed 
wish, of a copy for the press. 

With much respect, 

Your obedient servants, 

Isaiah M. Atkins, Jr. 
Nath'l P. Kemp, 
Nath'l Greene, Jr. 

Mr. James T. Fields. 



Boston, September 17, 1838. 
Gentlemen : 

Your flattering request of a copy of the accompanying Poem, delivered 
before your Society on the evening of its Eighteenth Anniversary, for pub- 
lication, I beg leave to acknowledge. 

Sensible that my production is quite unworthy to appear in print, I should 
certainly withhold the manuscript from the press were I not fully satisfied 
that youth and inexperience are sufficient apologies in all cases for defects 
in style and errors of judgment. 

With many thanks for your kind indulgence, and ardent wishes for the 
prosperity of the institution whose interests you have ever advocated with 
so much zeal, 

I am, gentlemen, 

Your friend and ob't serv't, 

James T. Fields. 

Messrs. I. M. Atkins, Jr. 
Nath'l P. Kemp, 
Nath'l Greene, Jr. 



POEM. 



When daylight fades, and o'er the silent deep 
Heaven's sentry-stars their wonted vigils keep, 
When night's cold dews o'er listless nature steal, 
Why stands yon helmsman at the lonely wheel ? 

When the fond wife, with all a mother's care, 
Kneels down to hear her infant's matin prayer, 
What tempts their guardian from his home to stray, 
And wander far from that dear group away ? 
Say, what charmed spirit in the restless wave 
Allures him forth its troubled path to brave ? 

Unmask, bold Traffic ! thou art weaving now 
Thy golden fancies round the seaman's brow ; 
Thou hast at will the magic power to guide 
His heart from home and child and cherished bride ; 
Thou hast a spell he may not rudely break, 
That fires his soul and bids each pulse awake, 
Nerves every sinew when the whirlwinds fly 
In thundering combat through the riven sky ; 
And as faint hope with storm-rent flag sinks down, 
Where raging gulfs her feeble whisperings drown, 



Thy charm still broods above the foundering wreck 
And smiles triumphant o'er the sea- washed deck. 

We are its votaries, brothers ; and we come, 
Like weary children to a common home, 
To steal a moment from its busy strife, 
And breathe awhile amid the flowers of life, 
Pausing together, still perchance to find 
The joys which happier hours have left behind. 

And as some actor, at the prompter's ring, 
Follows with trembling gait the drama's king, 
And while that master-spirit lights the stage 
With all the splendor of a golden age, 
Crosses the footlights with unnoticed stir, 
To clasp a bracelet or unloose a spur, — 
So I, a lisper, at this festal time 
Have come to greet you in untutored rhyme. 

Our band 's unbroken ! — brothers, look again ! 
I miss one form among your foremost men : 
Where lingers he who, gayest of you all, 
Once came with gladness at our festive call ? 

Come to the narrow mansion now — 

Who sleeps beneath yon drooping tree ? 
Come, for the dust on Torrey's brow 

Falls silently. 

Come, brothers, round that solemn bier : 

How eloquent was that glazed eye ! 
Come to his grave — 'tis fitting here 

We breathe a sigh. 



Peace to thy tomb, thou slumbering one ! 

We miss thy cheerful smile to-night : 
Sleep on, sleep on ! serenely run 

Thy pathway bright ! 

Farewell, farewell, thou manly heart ! 

Comrades, he lies not in the sod : 
In life he acted well his part ; 

He rests with God ! 

For us no wreaths appear — no garlands twined 
In learning's groves await our brows to bind ; 
There rings for us no praise o'er echoing walls ; 
For us no shouts ascend from classic halls ; 
Where science reigns our feet have never trod — 
We ne'er were welcomed by the muse's nod : 
Doomed through life's Spring a different course to run, 
We bring no laurels from Minerva won. 

But not all thankless, O ye favored few, 
Our task we find, — although denied with you 
The glorious boon of wisdom's prize to claim, 
With you to tread the brilliant courts of fame ; 
Afar we worship, meekly though it be, 
Her honored shrine, to all unclosed and free. 

Oh, not unblest the merchant's daily toil, 
Nor wasted all his thoughts and midnight oil. 
Lo ! where the bard of Alnwick castle pores 
O'er traffic's page, anon aloft he soars, 
Nobly obedient to the muse's call, 
And leads the van, most honored of them all. 



3 

And he who sweetly tunes the lyric strings, 

Whose heavenward strains are borne on gentler wings ; 

In yonder street his earnest eye behold, 

Turned from Parnassus to his piles of gold ; 

Can his known prudence in these times assuage 

The fears and scruples of a paper age ? 

Does he in banking as in verse excel ? 

Let financiers and calm directors tell ! 

And shall we leave unsung his honored name 
Whose memory gilds his country's rising fame, 
Shall not one strain in grateful homage rise 
To wreathe his tomb who read yon vaulted skies ? 
Shall we forget this joyous eve to gaze 
On that far pathway, lit with wisdom's rays ? 
Bright guide to Commerce ! though, alas, no more 
Thy buoyant footsteps mark earth's narrow shore, 
Though not for thee yon glistening pleiads burn, 
Though not for thee heaven's wheeling orbs return, 
Though from this spot no longer looks thine eye 
As once to scan the countless worlds on high, — 
In every age, through every sea and clime, 
The name of Bowditch triumphs over time. 

Harp of the sea ! bold minstrel of the deep ! 
Sound from your halls where proud armadas sleep ; 
Ring from the waves a strain of other days, 
When first rude Commerce poured her feeble rays ; 
Tell what rich burdens India's princes bore 
Of balmy spices to the Arab's shore ; 
What mines of wealth on Traffic's dauntless wings 
Sailed down from Egypt to the Syrian kings ; 



By what mischance, those wonders of their hour, 
The fleets of Carthage and the Tjrian power, 
Were lost, and vanished like the meteor ray 
That flashes nightly through the milky-way : 
Sing of the Grecian States, that warlike band 
Which held the ocean in its dread command ; 
Of Caesar's glory, when his navies furled 
Their sails before the granary of the world ; 
Of Afric's spoils by Vandals rent away, 
And Eastern empires waning to decay. 

Stand forth, old Venice — Genoa — Pisa — Rome ! 
With all your galleys on the crested foam ; 
Say, where are now your royal merchants seen ? 
Go ask the Red-Cross Knight at Palestine ! 

And thou, great Prince of Florence, — wise and free, 
With pride on history's scroll thy name we see ; 
And while entranced, that brilliant page we find 
Gemmed with the trophies of a cultured mind ; 
Another name demands the just applause 
Of friends of Commerce, and her equal laws ; 
Thine was a light that o'er broad Europe shone, 
And Roscoe's fame shall mingle with thine own ! 

But lo ! what crowds on Albion's shore arise, 
Of noble fleets with costly merchandize ; 
What swift-winged ships rush in from every strand, 
To swell the coffers of her teeming land, 
While lofty flags proclaim on every breeze 
The island queen, — the mistress of the seas ! 

Look to the West — the Elysian borders view ! 
See where from Palos speeds yon wearied crew : 



10 

Haste, ere the vision to your eye grows dim, — 
O'er rock and forest comes the Mayflower's hymn : 
Fleet as the night-star fades in brightening day, 
That exiled pilgrim-band has passed away ; 
But where their anchors marked a dreary shore, 
When first thanksgivings rose for perils o'er,, 
A nation's banner fills the murmuring air, 
And freedom's ensign wantons gaily there. 

Oh, glorious stripes ! no stain your honor mars, - 
Wave ! ever wave ! our country's flag of stars ! 
Float till old time shall shroud the sun in gloom, 
And this proud empire seeks its laureled tomb. 

Trace we the exile from his mother's arms, 
Through traffic's din, its mazes and alarms ; 
And as remembrance paints his swift career, 
From the rocked cradle to the noiseless bier; 
A lesson learn, — that life's divinest gem 
Is not wealth's boon or glory's diadem. 

Look through the casement of yon village-school, 
Where now the pedant with his oaken rule 
Sits like Augustus on the imperial throne, 
Between two poets yet to fame unknown : 
While restless Horace pinions martyred flies, 
Some younger Virgil fills the room with sighs ; 
Who, suffering now for one untimely laugh, 
Ere long will write his master's epitaph ; 
Forgetting in his lines and comments bland 
The painful ridges on his blistered hand. 

And that small rogue, how slyly he inweaves 
The Pickwick papers with his Murray's leaves ; 



11 

The race of nouns lies dim as sunken isles, 
While Mr. Weller lights his face with smiles ; 
Or Mrs. Bardell weeps, — or lawyers plead, — 
His task remains unconned, the wag will read. 

Struggling with Colburn at the Rule of Three, 
Yon pallid votary at the window see : 
What though he lingers with a wistful eye, 
Upon the dial as the sun mounts high ; 
Impatient boy ! the man will soon complain, 
Too swift the moments for his hours of gain ; 
Too fleetly pass the sands of life away, 
And death may claim him as a miser, gray. 

Panting with joy to leave his native vale, 
He leaps unarmed where scarce a veteran's mail 
Would shield from sin in all its cunning forms, 
Or keep secure where vice in legions swarms ; 
Yet leaves he not his peaceful home unwarned, 
Though many an earnest prayer perchance is scorned. 

Methinks, intent I see his wistful gaze 
Fixed on some gossips ; listening with amaze 
To fearful tales of city murders dire, 
And awful scenes of riot, blood, and fire : 
These are the wise old maids, the knowing ones, 
Through whose rich lore some small confusion runs : 
What though they think Greece lies in Baffin's bay, 
The Punic wars were fought in Canada ; 
That honest Shakspeare in New- York survives, 
And Mr. Plutarch still writes learned lives ; 
That Rome was pillaged, and the empire won, 
By royal armies led by Wellington ; 



12 

That Homer leaves his epic in the shade, 

Because he 's busy in the hardware trade ; 

That the same Helen Paris dared to win 

Still lives the bar-maid of some country inn ; 

That Moore, reformed, is very active now, 

In printing bank-notes for the town of Stowe ? 

Their hearts are honest as the day is long, 

And ever ready with a cheerful song : 

And still I love these quaint, old fashioned dames, 

Spite of their cry 'gainst hymeneal flames ; 

They carol blithely on till evening's close, 

Through all time brings, or joy, or lingering woes ; 

Perchance as happy with their tea alone, 

As many a matron with her stupid drone. 

In fashion now, our hero strives to reign, 
Sports the last hat — the latest Paris cane ; 
Hangs out long clusters of superfluous hair, 
And apes Lord Byron with his throat all bare ; 
Makes one, perhaps, of that queer tribe of men, 
Who play, in dress, part fool, part Saracen : 

These should be gathered from all Christian towns, 
And sent to nunneries in their sisters' gowns ; 
But, should the lady-abbess shut the door 
On these tame aspirants for the convent floor ; 
Send them with tonsors and a frame of rules, 
To study manners at the " Right Aim Schools." 

Behold him now, just launching into life, 
Teeming with hope, imagination rife ; 
His youthful dreams stand forth in real forms, 
The world before him — he to brave its storms : 



13 

And think you now as homeward oft he hies 

From daily toil, no tears bedew his eyes ? 

Forgets he now the simple evening prayer, 

Instilled in childhood by parental care ? 

Lingers not memory fondly round the place 

His boyhood knew, lit by a sister's face ? 

Throbs not his heart with some keen darts of pain, 

As he recalls his banished home in vain ? 

Ah ! though long years some pangs away may steal, 

There is a charm that he will always feel ; 

And though wealth's eye on feeling coldly dwells, 

And sneering points her to his hoarded cells ; 

That fairy Eden shall forever smile, 

And lure him back with many a loving wile. 

The mails are in ; lo, what cadaverous crowds 
Are rushing now, like spectres from their shrouds ; 
In vain the dinner waits, the wife looks sad, 
The children whine, the sweet-toned cook goes mad ; 
They stir not, move not from the busy walk, 
But all is solemn as an Indian talk. 
Say, would you tempt that earnest group to dine, 
With smoking venison and the raciest wine ? 
Sooner will rabid men to fountains take, 
Than those same worthies their intent forsake. 
Go, ask them now to buy the last Gazette, 
Or Graham Journal, while the council 's met ; 
And if in peace you wend your devious way, 
You '11 swim unharmed the gulf of Florida ! 

Trade hath its bubbles ! eastward where the sun 
Throws off his night-cap when his nap is done, 



14 

Lo, how they rise ! what shouts on every hand 
Proclaim the glories of our timber land ! 
Oh, who will credit such fantastic tales 
While banks suspend, and India-rubber fails ; 
While Fancy-stocks hang trembling in the air, 
And unwhipped rogues the guise of virtue wear ! 

Hark, to the cry ! an embryo city dawns 
On some dyspeptic in his morning yawns ; 
Up spring tall forests in his magic dream, 
And high crowned turrets in the distance gleam ; 
Short is his meal ; straightway a plan is drawn, 
Here lies a railroad, there a verdant lawn ; 
Here steamboats land, and where, since time began, 
A stagnant moat, ne'er visited by man, 
Has stood unsung, unhonored, in the shade, 
Behold the changes in a morning made ! 

The stock sells well, the brewer quits his beer, — 
Who picks up dollars when doubloons are near ? 
The shares go briskly off, the business thrives, 
The shopman heeds not now his tens and fives ; 
For who would stop to measure calicoes, 
While floods of gold through timber upland flows ; 
Who sings a tune to three-and-six per yard, 
While one's next neighbor plays a nobler card ? 
Not he, indeed ! ambition points the aim, 
He must keep horses, and grow fat on game. 

Mark now the fall ! Before the season 's late, 
Our wealthy lord must visit his estate ; 
And as his jaunt will raise some small alarms 
Among the tenants of the adjoining farms, 



15 

He takes the statutes of the state of Maine, 

His new brown coat, his golden-headed cane, 

Kisses his children, bids his wife adieu, 

And ere he knows it, half his journey 's through. 

With map unrolled, he leaves the village inn, 

Looking like Fusbos, when he conquers Finn ; 

Meets on his way some tiller of the ground, 

Perhaps his own — who knows? — he 's hale and sound ; 

The great man stops, the yeoman rolls his quid, 

Nor doffs his beaver, as the landlord did : 

Are you employed, sir, on the John Smith farm ? 

Our shopman asks, his anger waxing warm ; 

They say John Smith owns yonder swamp down there, 

Replies the ploughman, straightening out his hair, 

But as to farming, it is very clear, 

He '11 find more black snakes than potatoes here. 

Oh, short-lived bliss ! the shopman looks around, 
And finds his farm a tract of barren ground ; 
His forest trees to dwarfish shrubs decline, 
His turrets vanish, nor can he divine 
With what intent a railroad could be made 
To such a spot, where neither lawn, nor glade, 
Nor aught inviting to the eye of taste 
Relieves the dullness of the sterile waste. 

The bubble 's burst ! the dupe returns in haste, 
Makes a small entry on his dusty Waste, 
Ere yet the rumbling of the mail has ceased, 
" Profit and loss to cities lying east ; " 
And he who reveled on uncounted means, 
Will sell his township for a mess of greens. 



i6 

And is this all of life, I hear you ask, 
Are there no flowers to deck our weary task ? 
Glows not the merchant's brow with more than these, 
The hope of gain and wealth beyond the seas ? 
Cling not around his heart some happier ties, 
Fraught with bright fancies, linked with warmer skies ? 
A slave to gold, must man in bondage toil, 
And sweat forever o'er the accursed soil ? 

There are, thank heaven, beneath this fitful dome, 
Some leaflets floating near affection's home ; 
Some cloudless skies that smile on scenes below, 
Some changeless hues in life's wide spanning bow ; 
So let us live, that if misfortune's blast 
Comes like a whirlwind to our hearths at last ; 
Sunbeams may break from one small spot of blue, 
To guide us safe life's dreary desert through. 

Time-honored city ! be it ours to stand 
In thy broad portals, armed with traffic's wand ; 
To keep undimmed and clear thy deathless name, 
That beams unclouded on the rolls of fame : 
And foster Honor till the world shall say, 
Trade hath no worthier home than yon bright bay. 

And now, ye fairest of creation's light, — 
What can I bring you at our board to night ? 
Who dares to trifle with your auburn curls, 
While Holmes is singing " Our sweet Yankee Girls ?" 
Who talks of eyes, the choice of black or blue, 
While he, uncertain, halts between the two ? 
Not mine the task, — unused that lute to fill, 
Like Denmark's courtier, " 1 have not the skill ; " 



17 

What shall I sing you ? shall I recommend 
These gallant youths low at your feet to bend ? 
'T will need no logic, — they have learned too well 
That lesson elsewhere, as you all can tell. 
Hush, babbling muse ! no latticed halls invade ; 
Extend the fashions, girls, and help the trade. 
Time was, the town ran mad for bishop sleeves, — 
Time is, their shape all honest shopmen grieves ; 
Correct this item ere to-morrow's sun, 
And take our thanks for what of late you 've done. 
Time was, and meet one with a flaunting hat, 
You 'd write her down a simple country flat : 
But now our belles, in modern styles arrayed, 
Take up more side-walk than a canvas shade. 

But brief my lay ; the fairy-land of song 
Holds me a truant in its maze too long ; 
Yet chide me not, if lingering on the shore, 
I cast one pebble to the ripples more. 

Our Yankee ships ! in fleet career, 

They linger not behind, 
Where gallant sails from other lands 

Court fav'ring tide and wind. 
With banners on the breeze, they leap 

As gaily o'er the foam 
As stately barks from prouder seas, 

That long have learned to roam. 

The Indian wave with luring smiles 
Swept round them bright to-day ; 

And havens to Atlantic isles 
Are opening on their way ; 



18 

Ere yet these evening shadows close, 

Or this frail song is o'er, 
Full many a straining mast will rise 

To greet a foreign shore. 

High up the lashing northern deep, 

Where glimmering watch-lights beam, 
Away in beauty where the stars 

In tropic brightness gleam ; 
Where'er the sea-bird wets her beak ; 

Or blows the stormy gale ; 
On to the water's farthest verge 

Our ships majestic sail. 

They dip their keels in every stream 

That swells beneath the sky ; 
And where old ocean's billows roll, 

Their lofty pennants fly : 
They furl their sheets in threatening clouds 

That float across the main, 
To link with love earth's distant bays 

In many a golden chain. 

They deck our halls with sparkling gems 

That shone on Orient strands, 
And garlands round the hills they bind, 

From far-off sunny lands ; 
But Massachusetts asks no wreath 

From foreign clime or realm, 
While safely glides her ship of state 

With Genius at the helm. 




WARDEN & KIMBALL, 
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